"social techniques to match the situation"

"A firework he called it -- well, that was accurate enough.  It was a virtuoso display of paradoxes: opposing arguments brilliantly set forth so that one could hardly question the logic on either side.  He presented, among other things, a picture of the free democratic state as the high point of the social evolution of man; then, with shattering precision, he proceeded to demonstrate that the free democratic state was far too unstable to endure and therefore guaranteed its citizens misery and destruction.  He presented totalitarian systems as stable, enduring, reliable -- and then mercilessly exposed one by one the factors which rendered their eventual downfall inevitable.  By the time the reader was dizzy, Mayor was tossing out provocative suggestions for remedying these defects, and the total impression left on students like myself -- who went through college faced with what seemed like equally appalling alternative futures: nuclear war or a population explosion that would pass the six billion mark by the end of the century -- was that for the first time the West had produced a man capable of forging social techniques to match the situation."

-- John Brunner, The Squares of the City